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Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 13:48:22 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
From: Mark Thomas <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: scenic routes on maps
Sender: Mark Thomas <[log in to unmask]>



This discussion of map design in the popular press is for
amusement only.

In a column on page 42 of the November issue of Dune Buggies and
Hot VWs magazine (ISSN 0012-7132), there is a trip report from
a couple who traveled across the country in their very antique
VW, trying to hit the scenic routes on maps:

"In the legend box for most highway maps, a series of black dots
along a road denotes a scenic route. [I thought the dots were
usually green.] For years, our best road trips have included
routes with a pepper shaker full of black dots. Connie and I
just completed a 4,000-mile return run from California.... We
now have a new understanding of the map makers' [sic] art. It
appears that each state is allocated a certain number of black
dots ... and the dots have to be used."

Being from the East, and apparently equating "scenic" with trees
and really large mountains, he decribes a dotted road in
northern Nevada as "stark and beautiful in an open-range sort of
way, but not the black dot scenery we were used to."

Personally, I'm looking forward for the mapmaker with the guts
to correctly indicate the roads around Lubbock, TX, as scenic!

He also noted the opposite: that some very scenic routes didn't
have dots, although he considered them worthy: "After a second
Guinness [they were stopped for the night], I hypothesized that
the map maker's art only included a finite number of scenic
notations ... thereby making each state more equal."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mark Thomas / [log in to unmask] / 919-660-5853, fax:919-684-2855
Map and GIS Librarian / Economics Bibliographer
Public Documents and Maps Department
025 Perkins Library / Duke University, Durham, NC 27708-0177



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